This disclosure relates generally to online systems, and more specifically to measuring performance of content presented to online system users.
Online systems allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of an online system. Some online systems, such as social networking systems, also allow users to create user accounts or profiles on the online systems that are tied to the users' identities and include information about the users, such as the users' interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities, such as corporations or charities. Online systems commonly present various content items provided by their users to other users. For example, online systems commonly present their users with organic content, which is content for which an online system does not receive compensation in exchange for presenting to its users. Types of organic content include declarative information provided by a user, status updates, check-ins to locations, images, photographs, videos, text data, or any other information a user wishes to share with additional users of the online system.
In addition to presenting users with organic content, online systems commonly allow entities (e.g., businesses) to sponsor presentation of content on online systems to gain public attention for an entity's products or services or to persuade online system users to take action regarding the entity's products or services. Many online systems receive compensation from an entity for presenting online system users with certain types of sponsored content provided by the entity. Frequently, online systems charge an entity for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user. For example, an online system receives compensation from an entity each time a content item provided by the entity is displayed to a user on the online system or each time a user is presented with a content item on the online system and the user interacts with the content item or performs another action after being presented with the content item (e.g., visits a physical location associated with the entity that provided the content item).
Entities that provide compensation to an online system in exchange for presenting sponsored content to online system users may expend significant resources promoting their products, services or brands on the online system. Hence, the entities are typically interested in measuring effectiveness of sponsored content item presentation at influencing users of the online system to perform certain actions after being presented with such content items. For example, an entity may be interested in measuring effectiveness of presenting a sponsored content item on an online system at inducing online system users to visit various physical locations associated with the entity, such as a retail stores. As another example, an entity may be interested in measuring effectiveness of presenting a sponsored content item on an online system at influencing an online system user to purchase the entity's products or services.
Conventional methods for measuring effectiveness of presenting a content item at inducing action often include polling users to determine whether users have been exposed to the content item on an online system or whether exposure to the content item on an online system caused the user to perform a particular action. For example, comparing a number of times a location associated with a content item is visited by individuals who have indicated they were exposed to the content item and a number of times the location is visited by individuals who have indicated they were not exposed to the content item, allows determination of the content item's effectiveness at influencing individuals to visit the location. However, entities often obtain unreliable answers to polls because polled users often have limited recall regarding how they became aware of an entity's products or how they were enticed to perform a particular action.
Further, conventional methods for measuring effectiveness of presenting a content item in inducing actions are often most useful when the effectiveness is measured among users having common characteristics. For example, an entity seeks to determine effectiveness of presenting sponsored content items at influencing users in particular age groups or having a particular gender in influencing the users to perform one or more actions. However, polls have limited effectiveness in identifying users having similar characteristics, as users may provide incorrect information about their characteristics or decline to provide information about their characteristics.